all is lost. all is gone.

#ridmachete / private selective independent portrayal of rick grimes from the walking dead.

Stepping outside the coddling glorified safety of Alexandria’s walls is revelatory; there’s an element of purity, a touch of deathly holiness. Rick does not believe in God—not anymore. His faith is a tattered fruitless tragedy, a gutted lighthouse, a death song. In hallowed cavernous churches, he seethed and prayed and knelt on his knees, his truculent heart offered in the cupful of his calloused palms and only silent indifference washed over him in harrowing waves. Rick’s faith is housed in the oiled hinges of his colt, in the smooth well-used grip of his machete, in the instincts he has cultivated and bred and nurtured so carefully, with such tempestuous resolve. And he will not part with them, come peace, come comfort, come the jubilant prosperity of their community. He scrubs a weathered hand over his growing beard (he will not shave again.

Let him be the impulsive savage the Alexandrians believe him to be. He will not disabuse them of the notion. No one will fuck with him then. Certainly not after the little performance he put on for them, the blues of his eyes watery, sanguine streaks splashed over his cheeks, blood crusting underneath his fingernails). He glances over at the most recent addition to their little deranged settlement: he did not expect anyone new to join them, but lo & behold, she did, bearing a formidable rifle that she sure looks like she knows how to handle with polished expertise. Rick is no stranger to sizing survivors up and the mechanic walks with the gait of a person familiar with the spitting hurtle of danger. Now, he just needs to see if her mettle can be tested; is she as valuable as she seems to be? This wet run will tell. Perhaps, he should not have taken her out so soon, but better be safe than sorry, better position her in the face of risk in a controlled environment than have her endanger any of his people and make corpses out of them. He begins striding in the direction of an abandoned decaying town that one of his scouts chanced upon while doing the rounds a week ago: there is an outdoor strip mall with a grocery store and a mechanic’s shop they can strip for parts. Promising enough that it is worth the trip.

“Are you alright with walkin’ on your feet?” his voice comes out brittle, a harsh intonation with flickers of dim humor. “Could take a vehicle but seems a waste when we could stretch out our legs. Been a while since we trekked out like this. It’s better than bein’ cooped up in those suffocatin’ houses.”

Mired in the timorous mistrust of the docile sheep and their lacklustre malice, it is a comfort to pull himself away from it all: the politics, the backstabbing, the whispers behind closed doors and drawn curtains. At least, out here, it is all laid bare, truthful. The forest may as well be a house of glass.

if you could destroy the story before it started, would you—go back—before the unnameable thing? / obedience in the wrong house is a kind of plague, / survivor's guilt a sleight of hand. No outrunning / your blood's calamity, so you gather your teeth & dig your trenches [...]